Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains

Front Cover
1st World Publishing, May 15, 2004 - History - 148 pages
No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. It was not an expensive piece of wood. Far from it. Just a common block of firewood, one of those thick, solid logs that are put on the fire in winter to make cold rooms cozy and warm. I do not know how this really happened, yet the fact remains that one fine day this piece of wood found itself in the shop of an old carpenter. His real name was Mastro Antonio, but everyone called him Mastro Cherry, for the tip of his nose was so round and red and shiny that it looked like a ripe cherry. As soon as he saw that piece of wood, Mastro Cherry was filled with joy. Rubbing his hands together happily, he mumbled half to himself: "This has come in the nick of time. I shall use it to make the leg of a table."
 

Selected pages

Contents

RED CLOUD
7
SPOTTED TAIL
20
LITTLE CROW
31
TAMAHAY
39
GALL
46
CRAZY HORSE
55
SITTING BULL
69
RAININTHEFACE
83
TWO STRIKE
95
AMERICAN HORSE
103
DULL KNIFE
111
ROMAN NOSE
117
CHIEF JOSEPH
120
LITTLE WOLF
131
HOLEINTHEDAY
138
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 15 - When the Great Father at Washington sent us his chief soldier (General Harney) to ask for a path through our hunting grounds, a way for his iron road to the mountains and the western sea, we were told that they wished merely to pass through our country, not to tarry among us, but to seek for gold in the far west.
Page 14 - You must begin anew and put away the wisdom of your fathers. You must lay up food and forget the hungry. When your house is built, your storeroom filled, then look around for a neighbor whom you can take advantage of, and seize all he has.
Page 16 - You have heard the sound of the white soldier's ax upon the Little Piney. His presence here is an insult and a threat. It is an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be plowed for corn? Dakotas, I am for war!

About the author (2004)

A Santee Sioux, born in Red Falls, Minnesota, Charles Eastman was raised by his grandmother and uncle in Manitoba, Canada, where he learned Native American traditions and lore. As a teenager he returned to his father's family and attended mission schools and Beloit College. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1887 and from Boston University School of Medicine in 1890. Although his background made him unwelcome in some parts of white society and his education made him uneasy in Native American cultures, he worked for his people throughout his life as a doctor, as a representative in Washington, D.C., and as a founder of the Society of American Indians. His first published book, Indian Boyhood (1902), written for children, tells the stories and traditions of the Sioux nation. Red Hunters and the Animal People (1904), Old Indian Days (1907), and Wigwam Evenings (1909), written with the help of his wife, Elaine Goodale Eastman, continue in this vein, but his later work, including The Soul of the Indian (1911), The Indian Today (1915), and his autobiography, From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1916), attempts to interpret Native American culture for white society, describing the problems of assimilation.

Bibliographic information